


Conjecture

by Anonymous



Series: Is this thing (an)on? [8]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: M/M, Sugar Daddy Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 20:07:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18105557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Flash isn’t looking at the sneakers though. He’s eyeing Peter’s face suspiciously.“Your Aunt get a new job or something?”Can be read as a follow up to Pretext, but should stand on its own. Accidental sugar baby Peter Parker.





	Conjecture

Flash keeps looking at him funny. Peter tells himself he doesn’t care, but there’s a particular uneasy twist in his gut that’s hard to ignore.

He doesn’t look angry, or even disparaging the way he so often is about everything and anything to do with Peter. That would be par for the course. Status quo. But no, the looks he’s giving Peter now are more deliberative, which was somehow much, much worse.

Peter yanks open his locker, trying his best to ignore it.

“Yo, Penis!”

Peter turns around and immediately regrets it, as if he’s just accepted that’s his name now. But he also knows that if he doesn’t respond, Flash will just yell it louder until everyone in the hallway is paying attention. Sometimes it’s better to head things off at the pass.

Or, maybe not better, exactly. But slightly less humiliating, anyway.

“What do you want, Flash?”

“Are those new sneakers?”

“Uh, yeah,” Peter says.

The conversation has definitely taken a turn for the weird. Since when does Flash care about his shoes? Unless there was something wrong with them. Peter glances down. They look normal enough to him - white leather lowtops with a thick band of navy blue and dark red stripes running diagonally down each side.

Flash isn’t looking at the sneakers though. He’s eyeing Peter’s face suspiciously.

“Your Aunt get a new job or something?”

“No. Why do you care?”

“I don’t.”

“Uh huh, it sure sounds like it.”

“I’m watching you.” Flash says it like it’s meant to be a threat, or a warning or something.  Peter does his best to shrug it off.

“Whatever that means,” he mutters as Flash strides away.

The warning bell rings just then, and Peter has to shove his calculus book in his locker and grab his social studies binder in a rush so he won’t be late to class.

 

*

 

“Hey, how was school?” May asks when she gets home from work that night.

“It’s was alright, nothing exciting. But man, Flash is so weird sometimes.”

“Weird how?”

“I dunno. Just, weird.”

“That’s specific.”

“He kept going on about my sneakers.”

Peter cranes his head back from where he’s sitting on the couch, watches upside-down as May kicks off her shoes and reaches up to take her earrings out.

“Well, hon, they’re six-hundred dollar Gucci sneakers. They’re bound to draw some attention.”

“I - what?!”

May’s eyebrows go up, her tone exasperated.  “Peter, I know you’re not exactly a fashionista, but seriously, how do you miss something like that?”

Peter had already known the brand - it was right there in subtle white lettering on the back of each shoe. But he’d mostly figured no one would even see that part. Or care, even if they did notice.

Besides, they were _sneakers_.

Even if they were a super nice brand, a pair of sneakers can’t really cost that much, can they? Half a minute of slightly panicky searching on his phone provides the answer.

...apparently yes, they can.

He should be used to it by now, he thinks.  The kind of money that Mr. Stark throws around is sort of an abstract concept to begin with - Peter can’t really conceive of what would make a pair of shoes actually worth _six hundred dollars_ , nor quite wrap his head around the fact that Mr. Stark probably has a whole closet full shoes, most of them probably even more expensive than the ones he’d given Peter.

But for that matter, Peter realizes he sort of has a similar collection of his own going already. This isn’t the first pair of shoes Mr. Stark has bought him, after all.

By that point May has come around the back of the couch, leaning down to wrap her arms around Peter’s shoulders from behind, her chin resting on the top of Peter’s head. He tips his head back and she tips her head down so they can see each other. It’s kind of a weird angle, but it works.

“Are you okay with all of this?” she asks. “The shoes, the clothes, everything else?”

“Yeah, of course.” Why wouldn’t he be?

“Well, if you’re not, or if that ever changes - you say one word and I’ll make him stop. Got it, kiddo?”

Peter doesn’t quite understand where she’s going with that, but he knows May gets a little weird about all the gifts, sometimes. Especially with stuff like the car - Peter had been over the moon, while May had just stood there staring at it for a while with a blank expression on her face, only belatedly joining in on Peter’s enthusiasm. And even then, it had seemed a little forced.

“He has tons of money,” Peter tries to explain. “To him this stuff is just like, peanuts.”

“Still. My job pays enough to support us just fine. I don’t want you ever feeling like we need this stuff from him, okay?”

“Duh,” Peter scoffs. Who the hell actually _needed_ a $600 pair of shoes?

And besides, it isn’t like Mr. Stark ever demanded favors or anything in return for the presents. He just likes seeing Peter in nice things, is all.

Mr. Stark also liked taking those nice things _off_ of Peter, but that was more like a bonus, in Peter’s mind.

May doesn’t need to know about that second part, though.

 

*

 

Mr. Stark is already in the lab when Peter arrives the next day.

“Good, you’re here. Put these on,” Mr. Stark says.

‘These’ turn out to be a pair of photosensitive UVA/UVB blocking sunglasses. With KAREN pre-installed, who Peter greets happily.

“Stand over there, I want to run some light sensitivity tests on you. I don’t want you taken out of play by an alien flash-bang or something, if you’re caught out without your suit.”

Ah. Yeah, that had been last weekend.

Mr. Stark spends a while shining lights at him of varying brightness, asking Peter for feedback.

The lenses work well enough - but there’s still a split second delay before they adjust to the new brightness, so generally speaking they’re of more help with sustained brightness than they are with quick flashes, which they both realize pretty quickly.

Mr. Stark isn’t quite satisfied with that.

“Hmm, better. Not there yet, though. You can keep those in the meantime, I’ve got the schematics saved already.”

Peter folds up the sunglasses carefully, putting them in the case Mr. Stark gives him and shoving them in his pocket.

“Thanks,” he says, but Mr. Stark is already waving him off.

“That shirt looks good on you, by the way.”

“Yeah?”

Mr. Stark looks him over. “Anything else new? You know I can’t keep track.”

“The sneakers. And um, you know.”  Peter feels his cheeks heating.

“Do I? Let me think here,” Mr. Stark says, forefinger tapping against his lips. “Belt?”

He hooks his fingers through Peter’s belt loops, tugging, and Peter lets himself be pulled forward.

“Hmm no, I think I’ve seen that one before. Socks?”

Peter rolls his eyes. “ _No_.”

Tony reaches up, runs his fingers through Peter’s hair.

“It’s not a haircut, although I think you might need one soon - unless you’re trying to grow it out?”

Peter shakes his head, tries to ignore the way he can feel his cheeks burning. He knows Mr. Stark must already know. He’s pretty sure the waistband of his jeans is tugged down low enough that they’re visible, at least a little bit.

He wonders briefly if Mr. Stark wants him to grow his hair out. He wonders if it would be weird to ask, but before he can decide, Mr. Stark is talking again.

“Are you going to make me keep guessing or are you going to show me, sweetheart?”

And that’s all the invitation Peter needs.

 

*

 

“You should ask him for an Iron Man suit.”

“I don’t need an Iron Man suit, Ned. Do you have any idea how heavy those things are? I wouldn’t be able to swing around the city in one of those.”

“You wouldn’t need to swing around though, you could just fly!”

“Wow, Ned. Sorry if Spider-Man isn’t cool enough for you anymore.” Peter tries to play it off as joke, but he actually is just a tiny bit hurt.

“Oh come on, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, everyone else has armor, or at least kevlar panels in their suits. Or magic, I guess.”  Ned appears to be counting off Avengers as he goes. “War Machine is like a straight up tank. Falcon and Cap both have some kind of protection around their shoulders and chests, plus like, actual shields. Hawkeye and Widow must have kevlar or something sewn into their suits. Scarlet Witch and Vision have straight-up magic, so they probably don’t need it as much.”

Put like that, it does kind of make Peter feel... he doesn’t know what.

His suit is amazing, everything from the photosensitive lenses to Karen to the crazy tear-resistant material that can shrink down to fit him perfectly with the press of a finger. It hasn’t gotten a single rip in it yet, not even when Peter had been flung across the tarmac in Berlin.

But.

It hadn’t done much to soften the impact of that crash landing, either.

He knows it’s something Mr. Stark already worries about. It seems like every other time Peter sees him at the lab, Mr. Stark has some new fabric to test out, or a prototype of reinforced panels that can be added to vital areas of the suit.

Peter’s turned all of them down so far - he had to be able to _move_ , to twist and bend and fling himself around as needed. He wouldn’t be able to work effectively if he was bundled up in some bulky armor, or a material that wasn’t quite as flexible as he was.

“I don’t really need that stuff as much as some of the others do,” Peter says. “I can stop a bus with my bare hands, it’s not like a couple of kevlar panels are going to make a huge difference anyway. Besides, I heal super fast.”

“Well yeah, but... super fast healing doesn’t mean you can’t get hurt in the first place.”

Peter tries to swallow past the lump in his throat.

He knows that May worries, and obviously Mr. Stark does too. Even Happy worries about Peter’s safety, in his own way - which usually involves a lot of exasperated texting.

Most of the time, Ned is too awed by the superhero thing to react with anything other than unbridled enthusiasm, and Peter loves having someone to share that with.

Every once in a while though, Ned brings him crashing back down to earth, reminding Peter that he isn’t actually invincible. That maybe May and Mr. Stark aren’t just being overly protective when they freak out about Peter doing normal superhero stuff.

“Mr. Stark’s been working on it,” Peter says. “It’s just hard to find something that works with my fighting style, but I know he’s trying.”

“Well, good.” Ned nods, apparently mollified.

 

*

 

Peter is careful not to wear any of the special underwear to school. Because, well. Gym class.

Instead, he rolls it up inside the suit and shoves both down into the very bottom of his backpack each morning. After school he’ll either go home or swing by the tower to change, since Mr. Stark had really freaked out about Peter changing in alleyways, even though he’d tried to explain he always made sure the alley was empty first.

What that means though is that he has to be kind of careful digging around the bottom of his backpack when MJ asks if she can borrow a pencil, halfway through 5th period.

He’s actually not sure what would be worse, the suit falling out in front of everyone, or the red satin thong he’d packed for himself that morning.

“Uhh , here!” he says triumphantly when he manages to find a spare pencil.

“Thanks.”

MJ has been watching him, but she kind of does that to everyone. It’s just how she is. It probably doesn’t mean she caught a glimpse of anything suspicious.

Probably.

Probably?

That afternoon, instead of plopping his backpack down on the couch when gets to the tower, he brings it over to the lab table with him and starts unpacking.

“Hey, Mr. Stark.”

“Hey, kid.”

Mr. Stark looks up from the holo-projection he’d been manipulating, eyebrows raised when he notices the growing pile of textbooks and binders and notebooks Peter has stacked up on the table.

“Question - why is your school still using textbooks anyway?” Mr. Stark asks. “Have they not heard of tablets?”

“Uhh, yeah. I think the kids in the graphic design and programming courses get tablets to work on for the semester. But I’m not taking those electives, so - ”

“Hmm.”

Peter knows that sound. It’s the sound Mr. Stark makes before he spends a bunch of money on something insane.

“Oh no, Mr. Stark you don’t have to - that’s not why I was taking everything out like this.”

“O-okay, then want to tell me why you decided to clean out your entire backpack in my lab?”

“Uh huh,” Peter says as he grabs the last few things. “So earlier, I was thinking...”

There’s a crumpled up paper at the bottom - oh, it’s a pop quiz they’d had in Chemistry last week. He doesn’t need that. Last but not least, he sets the suit down next to the pile of books and pens and pencils, which unrolls a bit on the table.

“So while you’re thinking, I have another question. If these are out here,” Mr. Stark hooks a finger into the scrap of red satin peeking out from the pile on the table, lifting the underwear up, “then what’re you wearing under those jeans, Pete?”

Peter feels his cheeks grow warm at the implication. He hates to disappoint Mr. Stark, but feels the need to explain that he’s not actually going commando.

“Um, just regular stuff, you know. Gym day.”

“Ah.”

Peter swallows. “Anyway, I was thinking that I could put like, a false bottom into my backpack, so I wasn’t risking my suit and um ...other stuff, getting seen every time I take out my books for class.”

Mr. Stark nods his approval, plucking the now-empty bag out of Peter’s hands to examine it.

“First of all, let’s get you a new one. FRIDAY, find me something waterproof, weatherproof, sturdy. Something with a decent amount of padding on the straps and back panel, so we can hide some goodies inside.”

“On it, Boss.”

“Mr. Stark, you don’t have to - ” Peter stops himself, since that’s never been an effective argument. He’s tried. “I was just thinking of adding a hidden pocket inside, for the suit. We don’t need to do anything super fancy with it, ‘cause I lose backpacks literally like, all the time. ”

Mr. Stark rolls his eyes. “So we’ll stick a GPS in there while we’re at it.”

“Oh. Well yeah, that would be awesome.”

 

*

 

“New backpack, Penis?”

Peter shuts his locker door to find Flash standing right there, eyes narrowed.

“Yep.”

“You go through a lot of backpacks.”

“It’s kinda weird that you’d pay that much attention to something like that.”

Flash ignores the comment. “Guess that 'internship' with Tony Stark must be going pretty well, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s going great.” Wait, what?

Everything about this conversation is setting off alarm bells in Peter’s head. Flash wouldn’t actually be suggesting that - no, that would nuts. Peter himself has a hard time believing it, most days.

There’s no way Flash could _know_.

Right?

Peter is expecting some douchey comment about the internship being fake or something like that, but instead Flash tips his head forwards and starts talking again, this time in a low voice.

“The school counselor is pretty okay. I mean, she’s got this weird obsession with otters going on, I’m not sure what that’s about, but like, she’s okay to talk to. If you ever need to talk about… anything.”

“Good to know. Thanks,” Peter adds, because he was raised to be polite.

Flash seems to take that as an acceptable reply, because he looks at Peter for a beat and then nods before striding away.

 

*

 

Things only get weirder as the week goes on.

MJ slips a pamphlet about safe sex and free STI screening clinics in Queens into his hand as he’s leaving academic decathlon practice on Wednesday. She also includes a flyer for something called NICE, which Peter discovers stands for New Immigrant Community Empowerment.

“Uhh,” Peter says eloquently, not quite getting the connection. “Did you mean to give me these?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I thought they might be useful.”

“...why?”

“They’re trying to open a new community center to provide support services for day laborers and undocumented immigrants, so they’re raising money. The other one is fairly self-explanatory, at least I thought it was,” she says, frowning at him a little.

Peter digs in his pocket and pulls out a crumpled $5, offering it up. MJ takes the bill with a dubious look.

“Seriously?” she says.

Wow. He knows it’s not much, but it’s all the cash he has on him.

“Parker, listen. Your shitty taste in sugar daddies notwithstanding, I’m pretty sure you’re not actually this dumb. I’m not judging, but if you’re going to trade your twink body for candy you might as well be doing it for a good cause.”

“I’m not - ”

“Uh huh. Whatever.”

Is this what being blackmailed feels like? Is he - wait, is he _actually_ being blackmailed right now?

MJ wouldn’t do that. Would she?

A shiver trickles down Peter’s spine. For a good enough cause, she might.

 

*

 

The flyer sits in Peter’s backpack for the next three days. It’s not that he doesn’t want to help - he _does_ , but it just seems -

Weird.

And sure, he’s sort of asked for things before, but that was usually stuff that he needed, or stuff that he could sort of vaguely connect to his duties as Spider-Man. Most of the things Mr. Stark gives him just kind of happen, like the sunglasses or the sneakers or the car. But it’s not like Peter _asked for_ the car.

He tries for a roundabout approach.

“I gotta leave a little early today, Mr. Stark, I promised MJ I’d help hand out flyers for this charity thing.”

“Oh?”

Damn. It’s the tone of voice Mr. Stark uses when he’s not really paying attention - he’s too busy working on some design modifications for the War Machine armor.

“Yeah, it’s um, it’s a really cool organization,” Peter says, trying to remember his pitch, but Mr. Stark’s distracted state has thrown him off his game. “They help people who just came to the country understand their rights, so they don’t get exploited by like, bad jobs and crappy landlords.”

Mr. Stark leans back from the holo-display he’s working on, looking up at Peter.

“Wait, is this one of those conversations? I have to warn you, I’ve been informed on multiple occasions that I’m not great at recognizing those, so if it is, you have to tell me up front.”

Oh god. “One of what - um. No? One of what kind of conversations?”

“The kind of conversation where someone comes up with an abstract scenario and I’m supposed to realize they’re talking about me, without _actually_ talking about me,” Mr. Stark says. “Am I working you too hard? Is that what this is about?”

Peter breathes a sigh of relief. Okay no, Mr. Stark thinks this is something completely different.

“I’m not actually sure what the legal limitations are for work hours, wait - do you even have a work permit? Nevermind, I’ll have FRIDAY sort it out for us. Plus I’m probably violating like, eighty different workplace safety rules in this lab alone, not to mention all the time you spend swinging around the city in a spandex suit and panties.”

“Woah, okay no, that is definitely not what this is about,” Peter says, his brain still shorting out a little from Mr. Stark describing his underwear as _panties_.

Wait, is it weird that he kind of liked it? Probably not the time to dig into that one right now.

“Oh. Well, good,” Mr. Stark says.

“No it’s just um, my friend MJ. She uh, she’s helping raise money for this charity. The one I was talking about.”

And then he freezes up. Does he just straight up ask for money? How much money? Peter has no idea how much it takes to open a community center, it’s like picking a number out of a hat. He thinks, not a hysterically, of that scene in that old Austin Powers movie. One _million_ dollars. No wait, one hundred _billion_ dollars.

He lets the subject drop.

Peter is not cut out for this, no matter what MJ thinks.

 

*

 

Except the thing is, NICE ends up getting the money. Or at least that’s what Peter assumes, from the entirely uncharacteristic hug he gets from MJ the next time he sees her.

She pulls back after a moment, still smiling a little bit despite herself - Peter can tell it’s annoying her.

“I guess it worked?” Peter asks. He’s not going to specify what exactly.

Something about the question does seem to bring MJ back down to earth though. Her expression turns serious.

“Should I be concerned about what you had to do to make that happen?”

Peter shrugs. “I’m not.”

It’s the truth.

Actually, the complete truth would be that Peter hadn’t done anything specific to get the money. He hadn’t even brought it up again after that first awkward attempt. Mr. Stark must have been listening more closely than Peter had thought, or at least FRIDAY had been paying attention and Mr. Stark must have asked her about it later.

“Good.”

 

*

 

“Haven’t seen you wearing any new clothes lately, Penis. What happened?”

Peter looks down at his outfit. “Uh, no. I guess not.”

As is so often the case, Flash is maybe half right, but ultimately wrong. Peter is in fact wearing something new today. It’s also absolutely not something Peter is going to be mentioning to Flash though, of all people.

“You really need to find a better hobby, Flash. Have you thought about volunteering?”

“I volunteer with Habitat every other weekend,” Flash says, nonplussed.

“There’s this new community center that opened up a couple blocks away, you should talk to MJ about it.”

Without waiting for a reply, Peter beats a quick escape.

He’s been wearing Mr. Stark’s most recent gift all day, and it’s driving him _nuts_.

 

*

 

“Hey Mr. Stark,” Peter says a little breathlessly as he climbs in through the window.

“Hey, kid. What, was the elevator too slow?”

“No? I was running late, is all.”

Peter is well aware he has a terrible poker face, everybody has told him that at some point or another. Mr. Stark grins.

“I’m assuming this means you liked my gift, then.”

“Oh yeah, definitely.”

Peter shifts on his feet. He’s already pulled off his mask, but the rest of his suit is still on. It seems a little presumptuous to just take it off, like, right after he’s just said hello. Peter would lying if he said he wasn’t still tempted, though.

“And how did your friend MJ like it?”

Peter’s brain screeches to a halt. MJ didn’t - oh. Oh no. Oops.

Peter frantically replays the conversation in his head. He’s almost certain he hadn’t said anything super weird, even if he hadn’t realized until now that Mr. Stark was talking about the charity thing and not the underwear.

“She was really happy. Like, really happy.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Yeah. Thank you, by the way. For that.” Peter’s throat is dry. “And for the other thing.”

“The other thing?”

Mr. Stark raises an eyebrow and Peter rolls his eyes.

“You going to make me guess again, like with the MICE thing?” Mr. Stark says.

“It’s NICE, with an N,” Peter objects. “And I wasn’t trying to make you guess. I just, it felt weird.”

Mr. Stark reaches out from where he’s seated on the lab stool and pulls Peter forward, until he’s standing right in front of him; Mr. Stark’s knees bracketing his hips, his hands stroking Peter’s sides through the thin material of the suit.

“I thought we were past this, kid. You can ask for things, you can always ask.”

Peter can feel the heat of Mr. Stark’s hands through the suit. With Mr. Stark sitting in front of him like this, Peter has to tip his head down to meet the man’s eyes. It feels strangely powerful.

“Something you want to ask me right now?” Mr. Stark asks.

Peter tips forward, dizzy with need, Mr. Stark’s hair brushing just underneath his chin.  
  
“Yeah, _definitely_.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The sneakers Peter is wearing are [here](https://www.farfetch.com/shopping/men/gucci-ace-leather-low-top-sneaker-item-12156614.aspx?storeid=10644), if anyone is curious.


End file.
